Warming and top predator loss drive direct and indirect effects on multiple trophic groups within and across ecosystems

Abstract

1. The interspecific interactions within and between adjacent ecosystems strongly depend on the changes in their abiotic and biotic components. However, little is known about how climate change and biodiversity loss in a specific ecosystem can impact the multiple trophic interactions of different biological groups within and across ecosystems.2. We used natural microecosystems (tank-bromeliads) as a model system to investigate the main and interactive effects of aquatic warming and aquatic top predator loss (i.e. trophic downgrading) on trophic relationships in three integrated food web compartments: (a) aquatic micro-organisms, (b) aquatic macroorganisms and (c) terrestrial predators (i.e. via cross-ecosystem effects).3. The aquatic top predator loss substantially impacted the three food web compartments. In the aquatic macrofauna compartment, trophic downgrading increased the filter feeder richness and abundance directly and indirectly via an increase in detritivore richness, likely through a facilitative interaction. For the microbiota compartment, aquatic top predator loss had a negative effect on algae richness, probably via decreasing the input of nutrients from predator biological activities. Furthermore, the more active terrestrial predators responded more to aquatic top predator loss, via an increase in some components of aquatic macrofauna, than more stationary terrestrial predators. The aquatic trophic downgrading indirectly altered the richness and abundance of cursorial terrestrial predators, but these effects had different direction according to the aquatic functional group, filter feeder or other detritivores. The web-building predators were indirectly affected by aquatic trophic downgrading due to increased filter feeder richness. Aquatic warming did not affect the aquatic microor macro-organisms but did positively affect the abundance of web-building terrestrial predators.4. These results allow us to raise a predictive framework of how different anthropogenic changes predicted for the next decades, such as aquatic warming and top predator loss, could differentially affect multiple biological groups through interactions within and across ecosystems.

Trophic cascades within and across ecosystems: The role of anti‐predatory defences, predator type and detritus quality

“…Data available from the Dryad Digital Repository https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h70rxwdrg (Antiqueira et al., 2024).…”

“…The tank bromeliad phytotelmata (i.e. water‐filled compartments formed by leaves) and the above‐water portion of their leaves are home, respectively, to an aquatic and terrestrial environment (Antiqueira et al., 2022; Frank & Lounibos, 2008). Terrestrial (e.g.…”

Scaling species interactions: implications for community ecology and biological scaling theory

“…These body-size-related changes in species interactions should be considered in addition to direct effects of temperature on rates of species interactions [50,[303][304][305][306] and changes resulting from temperature-related shifts in the latitudinal distributions of predators, parasites, pathogens, and disease vectors [306][307][308][309][310]. In short, effects of climate change cannot be completely understood only with a perspective based on physiological energetics [311] but should also include the ecological context (also see [54,55,312]).…”

Journal of Animal Ecology in 2023: Looking back and looking forward

“…We also continued our long tradition of celebrating the work published in Journal of Animal Ecology . We awarded the 2022 Elton Prize for best original research published in the journal by an early career researcher to Pablo Augusto P. Antiqueira for the research article ‘Warming and top predator loss drive direct and indirect effects on multiple trophic groups within and across ecosystems’ (Antiqueira et al., 2022). The shortlisted papers for the Elton Award exemplify the breadth and depth of what Journal of Animal Ecology publishes: There were papers about robot frogs (Caldart et al., 2022), interaction networks (Parra et al., 2022) and latitudinal gradients and range‐expanding species (Jones et al., 2022).…”